1. compile with copy, 2. oops, error, file in use, 3. switch to XSI, 4. dig down and unload plugin, 5. switch to VS, 6. compile ……. yaddda ….. you know the drill. For years I’ve been doing this and for years I’ve been meaning to get around to making it slicker but somehow there [...]

If your editor supports the launching of external programs and allows you to insert text to the command line based on your current selection, then you can get context sensitive help from the XSI SDK help file. This will work for both the C++ and scripting SDKs. This snippet shows how to perform this in the Crimson Editor but it will work equally well in any other well supported editor that has this feature.

The hyperlinks generated in the Script Editor when an script error is thrown can be very helpful in finding exactly where a problem has occurred. The only issue is that if you are using an external editor, the line number is not communicated to the editor to make it automatically scroll to the line of code that produced the error.

Most standalone text editors allow for a command line parameter to indicate which line number to position the cursor when opening a new file. By making a quick change to one of XSI”s scripts, we can communicate this to the external editor. To make this change, follow the steps below.

When it comes to math, sometimes is hard to visualize what you are doing, if you are working with vectors and transformations the debugging process can be slow and tedious, you cannot even use primitives to trace positions and rotations if you are writing scripted operators. My workflow was to write quick run-once scripts in [...]